What is Business Case of Safety?

The primary aim of your health and safety program is to ensure workforce well-being and business continuity. No business owner wants his or her people to be injured, to be cited for noncompliance or even shut down completely for days. With an increasing focus on corporate social responsibility and sustainability, executives and managers want to be assured that they’ve done everything they reasonably can to ensure a safe working environment and uninterrupted operations. But investment in safety and health, just as in any other investment, goes beyond just doing the right thing. It still needs to make good business sense. Understanding how your management defines “good business sense” can make all the difference in their receptivity to your health and

safety agenda.

Organize your business case

Part of what will make management more receptive to your business case will depend on your order of reasoning. Decision makers will usually prioritize their reasoning as follows.

1. ROI on productivity improvement

2. ROI on direct cost savings

3. ROI on direct and indirect cost savings (although indirect cost savings are often challenged)

4. Improving organizational metrics

5. Reducing financial risk

6. Improving compliance

7. Aligning with corporate values

A good rule of thumb is to only include information and data that you can back up and feel confident in explaining. That said, the more data you have that is relevant and believable, the more persuasive your case will be.

One of the method to calculate the business case for Safety efforts or investment is to calculate the Additional Sales Units to be sold to compensate the cost of the incident. The poorer the safety performance a company has, the harder the sales team needs to work. You could make an argument like “Out of our losses this month, we have to sell 1,000 more units than last month to pay for them.”

Following calculator will help you to determine the additional units to be sold based on the cost of the incident.